Seal speak

Crappy image - taken with my phone as I didn't have my camera with me :(

Driving home from town I saw what looked like a fin protruding into the air from the water below the road. As I stopped I noticed another couple who had also stopped and were watching it. I thought it may be either washed up or in trouble but as we watched we noticed it raised it's head every so often and was actually propelling itself around in a circle. It seemed like very odd behaviour and immediately made me think it might be snagged on fishing line and unable to free itself.

I decided to call DoC (Dept of Conservation) help line to find that they had already received a number of calls about it. The DoC officer told me that this was actually quite normal behaviour for a seal which put my mind at rest. Apparently it has something to do with parent seals telling their pups to leave 'home', get out into the world and be independent. I went back to see the seal after making the call and found it had swim about 50 metres towards the beach. By this time a small crowd had grown, all seemingly very concerned but happy to hear it probably wasn't in any trouble.

Other than this wee bit of excitement, and bumping in to D in town where we enjoyed a brief catch-up, it was a pretty boring day of domestics, rest and nothingness.